


ugly human heart

by cherryconke



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:56:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26701795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryconke/pseuds/cherryconke
Summary: Before last year, Sylvain had never seen anything beyond the saltwater shores of Gautier, let alone the vast expanse of the desert. It’s disarmingly beautiful in the way only wild things can be: untouched and a little dangerous.—Sylvain and Felix go on a trip through post-apocalyptic Fodlan.
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 13
Kudos: 44
Collections: Sylvix Week 2020 Fic Collection





	ugly human heart

Here’s what they don’t tell you about the end of the world: it’s fucking _boring._

Most people keep busy fucking or fighting. There’s killing infected, too, but that’s more of a necessity than a fun pastime. You burn the trash, you fix the leak in your roof, you don’t let yourself get bitten. Everyone hates chores. 

Sylvain keeps busy with his deck of cards. They’re one of the few things he took from home, waterlogged and sun-bleached, the edges cracked like old leather. He shuffles once, twice, three times, tapping them along the windowsill before lining them up in a perfect stack.

“Rummy?” he asks Annette.

She sighs and puts down her binoculars. If there’s something out there, they’ll hear it first anyway. Infected aren’t exactly subtle. “Sure.”

Sylvain beats her twice. Then Annette proceeds to absolutely annihilate him until he admits defeat and takes the first watch.

Of all the assignments to get stuck on every week for two months straight, eastern patrol isn’t too bad. It’s warmer over the mountain pass, a dry kind of heat that sticks dust in your ears and between your toes. Crickets hum in the scrub brush, harmonizing with cicada song. At night, it almost feels peaceful.

There are fewer infected out here, too, which is always nice – less messes to clean up. The outpost they hole up in is bare bones but cozy, some unfortunate soul’s handbuilt A-frame outfitted as a hunting cabin. They keep firewood stacked beneath the stairs for cold, dry desert nights and boxes of extra ammo in the kitchen drawer. Beside the kettle sits a logbook, full of Annette’s neat handwriting and Ingrid’s careless scrawl.

_4/05: Cleared 1 stalker. AD & IG _

_4/12: All clear. AD & SG _

_4/19: All clear. IG & SG _

_4/26: Found + cleared dead elk on the trail. No infected in 10 mile radius. AD & SG _

_5/4: Cleared 3 infected: 1 runner, 2 stalkers. AD & SG _

They ride out together the next morning in the predawn chill. Before last year, Sylvain had never seen anything beyond the saltwater shores of Gautier, let alone the vast expanse of the desert. It’s disarmingly beautiful in the way only wild things can be: untouched and a little dangerous. 

He turns in his saddle to catch the sun peeking up over the horizon, drenching everything in a golden glow. Annette clicks her tongue against her teeth where she waits for him ahead, a familiar, unspoken _hurry up._

— 

Fhirdiad sits nestled in the foothills of the Itha mountain range, surrounded on three sides by rocky beaches and evergreen islands. It was a port town before the virus took hold and strangled international trade routes. Now it’s the biggest settlement west of Almyra, a solitary beacon of life in the land of the dead. They’ve got a tentative truce with the two settlements in the east and south, dotted-line boundaries with miles and miles of no-man's land in between. 

Ashe greets them at the east gate. “All clear?”

“Yep!” Annette trills from her horse.

“Good. Go get some rest,” Ashe says, taking the reins as they dismount. “Dimitri wants to see you,” he adds to Sylvain, speaking low so that Annette can’t hear. 

Sylvain does his best to conceal his surprise, focusing instead on sliding the buckle through to unclip his saddlebag. “Do you know why?”

Ashe shakes his head. “Didn’t say.”

The Blaiddyd family runs Fhirdiad like a well-oiled machine. They’re the ones who decided to build around the government’s original quarantine zones when shit hit the fan, raising walls that could withstand even the most brutal horde attacks. The remaining living flocked there from all across Faerghus, abandoning their homesteads and cabins in the woods, drawn by the promise of protection and relative peace. 

That was twenty years ago. Now, Fhirdiad thrives. Thanks to regular patrols and well-maintained outposts, they haven’t had a horde reach the gates since last fall. Even then, it was just three runners who crossed over from the border, freshly turned and devilishly quick. Ashe picked them off one-by-one with his crossbow, not missing a single shot. 

He ignores the rush of blood in his ears, vaguely wondering what Dimitri could want. What he might know.

“Thanks for the heads up.” Sylvain claps him on the shoulder, his saddlebag finally free. Ashe smiles and waves him off, already busy getting the next patrol party through the gate.

—

The most effective way to kill infected is with fire. Pour some gasoline, strike a match, let the flames do the work for you.

It’s easier said than done, especially in Faerghus, where the ground is perpetually damp and rain clouds hang low over the horizon. Flamethrowers and fuel are low supply, high demand commodities. Like cigarettes or fresh coffee grounds, they rarely pop up along Fhirdiad’s trade route and when they do, they’re outrageously expensive. 

So they do what everyone from Faerghus does: they adapt. Ashe is a deadly shot with his crossbow; Ingrid meticulously disassembles and cleans her old revolver after every patrol run. Felix won’t let anyone touch his precious machete. Annette carries a double-barrel shotgun on her hip and a sledgehammer that weighs almost as much as she does.

Sylvain grew up hunting deer, not infected. “Same difference,” Ingrid said on his second day in Fhirdiad, sliding a rifle and hunting pistol across the armory counter with a wry smile. “If you don’t think about it too hard.”

—

He’s on his way up to Old Fhirdiad when he runs into Mercedes.

She’s standing outside Anna’s, browsing through piles of trinkets and junk parts. The last time Sylvain was here, he’d been charged an arm and a leg for a chess set with half the pieces missing.

“I was hoping to see you,” Mercedes smiles into their hug. “You didn’t stop by on patrol.”

Sylvain shrugs. “Blame Annette. She insisted on getting back before it got dark.”

Mercedes hums. “Probably a good choice.”

“What are you doing all the way up here?”

“We had a straggler wander through last night. They took down fifty feet of tripwire trying to get to the house.” Mercedes nods towards the shop window. Sylvain can barely make out the back of Dedue’s ponytail, bright silver in the dim light. He’s up front, gesturing to one of Anna’s many treasures behind the counter.

Few people survive long outside the protection of city walls. Safety in numbers and all that. Mercedes and Dedue choose to make their living in the quiet solitude of the foothills, working the tough, waterlogged land and looking after a small barn of chickens and goats. They come into Fhirdiad every week to trade fresh eggs and veggies for necessities you can only get in major cities: oil, ammo, batteries. 

Sylvain’s made it a habit to swing by after hitting his last patrol stop. Dedue kicks his ass at cards and teaches him fisherman’s knots from his previous life spent as a captain along the coast: cat’s paw, clinch, centauri. Mercedes drinks him under the table and gives the best advice of anyone he’s ever met. They’re good people and good company, two things Sylvain’s missed out on for most of his life.

He watches Anna measure out a spool of wire through the window. “Runner?”

Mercedes shakes her head. “Clicker.”

Sylvain wrinkles his nose. As far as infected go, clickers are among the most dangerous, possessing superhuman strength, crude echolocation, and the stubborn refusal to just fucking die already. 

“They’ve been completely consumed by the virus,” Ashe explained to him once as they doused a clicker’s body – disfigured by fungal spores, glowing neon with radiation – in gasoline. “I used to have a hard time killing them, but at a certain point–” he strikes a match, the rough rasp of friction loud in the silence, “–there’s no humanity left.”

The bell on the shop door chimes as Dedue exits, clever hands coiling a length of freshly cut wire into a neat loop.

“Sylvain,” he says, clapping him twice on the back. “We missed you at cards this week.”

“Ingrid and I got caught up in Galatea for a few days. I had to head out on patrol the minute we got back.”

“Ah, next week, then.” Dedue pauses, looking at him closer: hair wind-whipped from the ride back, wearing three day old travel clothes. “You must be exhausted.” 

Nothing gets past that guy. Mercedes either, for that matter. Sylvain can’t help but laugh. “Just doing my part. Are you keeping safe up there? Mercedes told me about your clicker problem.”

Dedue’s mouth curls into a small smile. “Yes, we took care of it. But I appreciate your concern.”

“The blackberries will be ripe next week if you’d like to come by. I’ve been thinking of making sweet buns,” Mercedes offers.

Sylvain smiles. His friends really are too good to him. “No need to bribe me, Mercie. You know I love getting out of here when I can.”

Growing up in the wild teaches you things: how to use every part of an animal, what stars will point you home, the specific, haunting quiet that precedes a horde. What it didn’t prepare Sylvain for was how _loud_ living with humans can be. He’d barely gotten any sleep his first week in Fhirdiad, bolting awake at every little noise the city made. Mercedes had noticed the bags beneath his eyes and taken pity on him, offering their cabin as a quiet reprieve from the city. “Some peace and quiet might be nice,” she’d said, even though they both know there’s no such thing.

Mercedes’ smile is fond when they hug goodbye. “You’re welcome anytime, Sylvain.”

—

Sylvain’s only seen Dimitri a handful of times since that first night Ingrid found him limping along her patrol route. He’d been splattered in mud and blood, with nothing to his name but his father’s shotgun and a backpack.

“We’ve got a live one,” she’d hollered into the woods behind her, revolver pointed directly between his eyes. Dimitri emerged from the brush not two seconds later and knelt at Sylvain’s side. 

“Where are you from?” he asked, gesturing for Ingrid to lower her gun. She did, but only by a fraction of an inch.

“Gautier,” Sylvain croaked. His voice was rough from disuse and dehydration.

The look the two exchanged said everything. Like they’d just found a dog who went and rolled in something rotten.

“Take him back to City Hall,” Dimitri finally said. At the time, Sylvain hadn’t known if it was his saving grace or his death sentence.

Stragglers – true human stragglers, not infected – aren’t common. One week in the wilds and you’ll either turn or you’ll die. Even the toughest folks don’t last out there by themselves. Sylvain wouldn’t have, but it was better than staying.

Later that night, Dimitri offered him an opportunity: a life in Fhirdiad in exchange for help protecting it. 

And Sylvain took it, no questions asked.

—

At the heart of the original quarantine zone lies Old Fhirdiad. In the before times, it was a bustling center of business. Downtown was lined with shops and restaurants and bars, people from all over were free to come and go as they pleased. City Hall housed a government of elected committees, councils, and officials. Now it’s home to a stockpile of weapons, medicine, ammo, and the so-called prince of Fhirdiad.

Rumors say he went a little mad after losing his parents to a particularly brutal horde attack. They also say a clicker clawed his eye out and he lived to tell the tale. Sylvain’s not sure which to believe. 

As far as headquarters go, City Hall is nice. Clean marble floors, plush furniture, the whole nine yards. Sylvain finds Felix, of all people, sitting on one of the sofas in the entry hall, fiddling with a small piece of wood and a carving knife. 

“Hey,” Sylvain waves, masking his surprise. Felix spends all his time down at the old warehouse down by the docks, training at the gym or shooting target practice at the range. Sylvain doesn’t think he’s even seen him in the city more than a handful of times, let alone all the way up here.

Felix grunts in acknowledgement without looking up. 

Sylvain’s about to ask what he’s whittling, but he’s spared the small talk by Ingrid’s arrival.

“Good. You’re here,” she says to Sylvain. “Dimitri wants to see you.”

“What about me?” Felix sounds annoyed.

Ingrid rolls her eyes. “Wait your turn, he’ll see you after. Go,” she gestures Sylvain down the hallway she came down. “Third door on the left.”

Contrary to titles, Dimitri Blaiddyd isn’t royalty. He’s the closest thing the city has to a leader, though, and together he and his inner circle schedule patrols, delegate supplies, and maintain peace. He’s a powerful man. Unlike other powerful men Sylvain’s known in his life, he doesn’t wield that power as a lethal weapon.

Sylvain takes a deep breath and knocks twice.

“It’s open,” Dimitri calls.

He’s only been in Dimitri’s office once before, on the night they found him. Ashe had explained later that they’d taken him here to avoid the inevitable rumors if they’d appeared at the front gates with a human straggler.

It looks mostly the same as it did last year. There’s an oval meeting table crammed with mismatched chairs, a simple wooden desk piled with paperwork, stacks of supply crates lining the walls. Dimitri’s leaning up against the windowsill, a cigarette burning between his fingers. The static scratch of an ancient ham radio plays throughout the room, barely intelligible.

“It’s good to see you,” Sylvain says.

Dimitri’s nothing but courteous. “You as well.” 

There’s a moment of awkward silence as Dimitri surveys him. His eye shines electric blue. The old scar on Sylvain’s forearm itches beneath his shirt sleeve.

Sylvain’s the one to finally break the silence. “Ashe mentioned you wanted to see me.”

“Yes,” Dimitri agrees. He stubs out his cigarette, flicking the butt into an ashtray on his desk. “I hate to ask this of you, but I require a favor.”

Well, well. The prince needs _his_ help? “What sort of favor?”

“There have been rumors,” Dimitri says. “Coming from out east.” 

Sylvain quirks his brow, eyes flicking to the radio set in the corner. “Of?”

“Glenn,” Dimitri says bluntly.

“Ah.” Sylvain exhales hard through his nose. “What kind of rumors?”

Felix and Ingrid still refuse to talk about it, but Sylvain’s heard the secondhand stories. How, a year before he’d shown up in Fhirdiad, Dimitri’s parents went missing on a routine supply train headed south. How Glenn – the best hunter the city had – went looking for them. How Lambert and Patricia had come crawling back to the city gates after four days of panic, freshly turned and frothing at the mouth. How Dimitri had been the one to burn their bodies himself.

The easiest theory – the most widely accepted theory – is that Glenn died somewhere out there, looking for the Blaiddyds. Maybe he turned, maybe he didn’t. Either way, nobody, not even Glenn, could survive out there on his own.

“I have a contact in Almyra. He claims he’s seen a man who matches Glenn’s description,” Dimitri says.

At best, it’s a tenuous thread of hope. At worst, Sylvain will die out there, too, looking for someone he’s never even met. 

“I would’ve thought you’d send Felix,” Sylvain hedges. “It is his brother, after all.”

“I am sending Felix.” Dimitri pauses, leveling his gaze at him. “I’m sending both of you.”

—

“So,” Annette sets a glass down in front of him, half full of amber whiskey. “What did Dimitri want?”

Not for the first time, Sylvain’s reminded that word travels fast.

 _The Dray_ probably ties with Mercedes and Dedue’s cabin for Sylvain’s favorite place in the world. There’s booze and good company, and even better, it’s quiet here in the middle of the afternoon. The regulars don’t show up until five, once they’ve done their day’s work, leaving them to chat in relative privacy.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” Sylvain says. The whiskey burns on its way down, pleasant and warm in his chest. “There’s a new trade route he wants to set up out east.”

It’s an easy lie, one Sylvain came up with himself. Almost believable, too, but Annette catches it immediately. She pouts at him and Sylvain’s reminded that he’s never been able to say no to her doe eyes. “No there isn’t,” she argues.

He sighs, sips at his whiskey to kill time. Annette’s drink sits untouched on the bar. “No,” he agrees. “But there _is_ a favor he needs me for, and he did make me swear not to say a word, so I can’t–”

“Tell me anything,” Annette finishes for him. “I know.” She trails a finger around the rim of her glass, brows furrowed like she’s deep in thought. “If you can’t tell me what it is, you could at least tell me who you’re going with. I’ll figure it out once you leave, anyway!”

“It’ll be Felix and I.”

And this makes her _laugh,_ of all things.

“He’s sending _Felix_ with you.” Annette says, snorting around her whiskey. “Felix. Felix Fraldarius. You know he refused to go on patrol with _anyone_ for a whole year? He just says he _works best by himself._ And Dimitri’s sending him on a top secret mission out east with _you._ That Felix?”

Sylvain finishes off his glass in a single swig and signals to Raphael for another. Annette’s just sitting there, looking at him expectantly. 

He sighs, clears his throat, pushes his hair out of his face. “Yeah. Yeah, that Felix.”

Annette’s mouth curls into a small, amused smile. 

“What?” He asks. Something hot rises in his throat. Apprehension, maybe.

“Have you ever been all the way out there?” Annette asks instead. She reaches for the deck of cards that sits between them, shuffling it once, twice, three times. “Out past the eastern outpost?”

Sylvain shakes his head as she deals them each a hand. “No. What’s it like?”

She hums, brows furrowing as she shuffles around the cards in her hand. Sylvain picks up his own hand. It’s a mixed bag. 

“It’s lonely,” she starts. Her expression is far away as she picks up the ace of spades that lies face-up between them and adds it to her hand.

She finally looks him in the eye, bleeding haunted vulnerability.

“It’s terribly lonely.”

**Author's Note:**

> \- fic title is from a [daniel romano song](%E2%80%9C) of the same name (a playlist is currently in the works)  
> \- the setting and “types” of zombies are influenced by the worlds of the last of us + fallout games, but no prior knowledge of either games is needed!  
> \- rating will go up in later chapters  
> \- ty eth for beta-ing this chapter for me!


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